250,000 seasonal hires. How many get verified?

The Vetted Workplace

Real hiring mistakes. Real red flags. Real fixes.

Every festive season, businesses onboard a small army they barely know: the rider who will knock on a customer's door, the packer who will handle your stock, the cashier who will count your money. They are signed up in days, often through a third party, and the background check is the first thing to go.

The Season in Numbers

According to a report by NLB Services carried by PTI, India may create 200,000 to 250,000 seasonal and gig jobs between July and December 2026, with festive hiring expected to grow 15 to 20 percent. Around 45 percent of demand is expected to come from tier II and III cities, across e-commerce, quick commerce, retail, logistics and hospitality. The same report notes that employers typically begin workforce planning 12 to 14 weeks before the festive peak.

Those figures are estimates, not a headcount. But the direction is clear: a very large number of people will be onboarded quickly, in roles where they handle money, goods and access to other people's homes. Notice that the report says nothing about screening at all. That silence is the story.

What Employers Themselves Admit

A Genius HRTech survey of 1,647 HR professionals and business leaders, reported by The Tribune in May 2026, found that:

• 57% believe organisations often compromise verification to hire faster.
• 33% had come across fake or inflated educational credentials.
• 33% had flagged identity or address inconsistencies.
• 42% named high-volume onboarding as the biggest verification challenge for gig and temporary workers.
• 71% believe identity and criminal verification should be mandatory across all gig platforms.

These are respondents' experiences and opinions, not audited rates, so treat them as a signal and not a statistic. But when most of the people running these systems say corners get cut, it is worth listening.

The Regulatory Signal: You Can't Outsource the Responsibility

In April, Maharashtra's labour minister said, as reported by Deccan Chronicle, that companies which call gig workers "partners" must take full responsibility for their background checks. Officials also questioned who authorises third-party verification agencies, what criteria they follow and on what legal basis. The measures were described as proposals under consideration, not enacted rules.

Separately, the central government's Social Security rules for gig and platform workers, notified in May 2026 according to MediaNama, require aggregators to register new workers in real time or daily. You cannot register someone accurately if you never established who they are. Whatever the final shape of these rules, the direction is the same: the principal employer is expected to know who is doing the work.

Our Position: "Temporary" Describes the Contract, Not the Risk

Here is the claim that will annoy some operations teams: seasonal hires are often the highest-risk people in your business, not the lowest. They get the least training and the least supervision, and they often get the most direct access to cash, stock, vehicles and customers. The shorter the contract, the less time you have to notice a problem, and the more the check matters up front.

• Risk follows access, not contract length. A three-month rider who enters customers' homes carries more exposure than a permanent back-office clerk. Verification should be tiered by role.
• Hiring through an agency does not transfer the liability. If a staffing partner skips checks, the failure still lands on your brand, and increasingly on you in the eyes of regulators. Your agency is a vendor, and vendors need to be checked too.
• Speed is no longer a good excuse. Workforce planning starts 12 to 14 weeks ahead, which is plenty of time to build verification into the process. And with automated checks, such as Millow's background verification reports in under 12 hours, "we had no time" is much harder to defend.

Reasonable people will argue that full checks on every temporary worker are slow and costly. That is exactly why we say tier them, not skip them.

The Guardrail That Keeps This Fair

The vast majority of gig and seasonal workers are people doing honest work, often as a first or second income. Verification is not a presumption of guilt, and it should never be used to profile people by where they come from, what they look like or what they believe.

Keep checks proportionate, consent-based and relevant to the role. Collect only what you need, tell workers what is being checked and why, and protect the data. India's data-protection rules are moving the same way: the DPDP Rules' core compliance duties begin on 13 May 2027, according to law firm JSA, and thousands of seasonal ID documents sitting in a recruiter's inbox is exactly what will be hardest to defend.

The Fix, Before Your Next Seasonal Intake

• Tier by role. Identity and address checks for everyone. Add criminal and court-record checks where a role handles cash, enters homes, drives or holds inventory. A "clean" identity check alone can still miss a lot, as in this case of undisclosed court cases.
• Make sure the person who shows up is the person you checked. Matching the individual to the verified ID matters when onboarding is fast and remote, the same logic as in our edition on proxy interviews.
• Use the planning window. Start verification during the 12 to 14 weeks of workforce planning, not the week people join.
• Stage access. Until checks clear, keep new hires away from cash handling, high-value stock and unsupervised customer contact.
• Verify the verifier. Ask every staffing and verification partner who does the checks, how, and what evidence they keep. As we showed in the fake degree stamps story, a stamp on a report is not proof the work was done.
• Check to the role they might become. If seasonal staff may be converted to permanent roles, verify to that higher standard from the start.

This is how we think about it at Millow: automated background checks with reports in under 12 hours for the workers you hire, and vendor and supplier background checks for the staffing partners who supply them. Fast enough to keep up with a festive intake, rigorous enough that "temporary" is not a reason to look away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should employers run background checks on seasonal and gig workers?

Yes, in proportion to the role. Confirm identity and address for everyone, and add deeper checks, such as criminal and court records, where the role involves cash, customer homes, vehicles or valuable inventory. The length of the contract is not a good measure of risk; the level of access is.

Who is responsible for verifying gig workers hired through a staffing agency?

Regulators are signalling that principal companies cannot simply outsource this. Maharashtra's labour minister has said that companies using gig "partners" must take full responsibility for background checks, though those measures were described as proposals. The exact legal position depends on the contract and the law that applies, so take advice, and in the meantime check how your agency verifies people.

How early should seasonal hiring verification start?

During workforce planning. NLB Services' report says employers typically begin planning 12 to 14 weeks before the festive peak, which leaves time to build verification into onboarding. Automated checks that return within hours instead of days mean verification does not have to delay joining dates.

How does your business handle verification during the festive rush: full checks, partial checks, or none? Reply and tell us. We'll share the most useful approaches.

Figures reflect public reporting as of 21 October 2026. Survey results reflect respondents' views and experiences, and hiring figures are estimates. Maharashtra's measures were described as proposals. This is general information, not legal advice.

The Vetted Workplace

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Written by the team at Millow.io — see what a background check catches before you make your next hire.